The thing with Director's Cuts

So if this site ever gets out I'm sure I'll draw some heat about this but here goes: THE DIRECTOR'S CUT pro or con?!

They started like a small cult phenomenon. The buzz would get around that this director or that would be releasing his or her vision of the film. The original impetus, befor the producers and their audience tests changed the ending, cut out essential footage, slapped up a montage instead of letting the film run a forty five minute course of historical narative. Whatever the case, they are here now, in varried and unpredictable incarnations.

At first I was certain that they were the better of the two films. At first I was. I found myself defending such drastic changes as the removal of narration from Bladerunner and its darker ending. Everyone mostly agreed that the extra footage in The Abyss was amazing, but a bit didactic. Redux was long and hard to sit through, but when the original a Sunday morning cartoon? Still, the added scenes with Brando are well worth wading through the French Plantation scene and the playmates in the downed helicopter. The directors by and large have demonstrated their egos, their odd visions and their unabashed artistry by challenging the original release, the accepted offering of the producers and giving us, at times, a new work of art.

Dune illustrates the concept of director's cut in reverse. The original offering is the director's cut. There's a second edit of the film that made its premiere on network television with added footage. The eyes of the fremen in these additional scenes were never colorized. David Lynch had his name removed from this version of the film to demonstrate his unhappiness with it. The famous non existant "John Doe" director Alan Smithee takes credit for this one.

Not every film branded as a director's cut is a new film. Some of them have small clips, or perhaps a slightly elongated or curtailed beginning or end. However, sometimes, just sometimes, the producers get it right the first time out and the Director is off his rocker!

Lets examine the case of The Big Blue by Luc Besson. A film full of wonderful silence, long shots of inky blakness with a single figure descending to inhuman depths on a single breath of air; the sport is known as free diving. The original US release was cut down from the 138 minutes of the European release to 119. The thought was that there were too many silences and abstract imagery (we aren't given much credit as a cinema going audience). The soundtrack, Eric Serra's synth heavy brainchild, was replaced by Conti's more ehtereal synth murmers. I'm a fan of Serra's work, his previous and later colaborations have yielded wonderful sound scapes, however, here, I think Conti wins out, as his music is less invasive, less overpowering, it allows the film to breathe and the audience to smell the ocean. In the only available DVD version of this film, the director's cut, the film has been dragged out to 168 minutes and Serra's original soundtrack has been revived, yet it feels out of synch with the movie. Its so disconnected from the total film that it clashes, clobbering wonderful silences that Conti's soundtrack was keenly aware of. All in all, this is perhaps the worst director's cut I've ever seen. The American release was brilliant as it was a very quiet film that left you with puzzling questions that didn't take away from the plot. The new version is heavy handed, over written, over shot and over scored. This is one of those cases where the producers completely should've won out, and for fans of the producer's cut, the American release, sad days people, you can't even buy the VHS anymore... eBay is your only recourse. So good hunting...

-L